219
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
April 1927
youth grasp the idea that there is, after all, no personal God possessing intelligence and will, the Creator and Preserver, the Governor of the universe; the. loving heavenly Father .who has created no more than He is able and anxious to manage in detail —will the Church have any excuse for existing? M an A M oral B eing Man is a moral being. His nature demands a moral govern ment. How can there be any .sense of accountability left if God is thus .removed so far away or is resolved into nature? It is perfectly obvious what these Conceptions do to prayer life. Prayer is^Simply sweet wind. In seasons of affliction and temptation, it means that men are left absolutely adrift*! The message of th e 'God of natural force can be but ghastly mockery;to one who needs more than human wisdom and power to sustain him in the crushing exper iences; of life. No wonder Dean Fenn of Harvard Divinity School said: “We must,seriously raise the question whether lib eralism can bear the weight of the tragedies-,;:of-human expe rience.” . What is our answer to all this?- God is “knOwable” (Rom. 1 :19)V' Experience is a safer teacher than reason. The man who through Jesus •Christ has found the personal God as his refuge and strength can still challenge the world. He alone has “the peace of God that passeth all understanding.” Dr. Caldewolf, of Edinburgh University, once said: “The divine existence is a truth so plain that it needs no proof and a truth so high that it admits of none.” Yet the Christian can truly say, “God is, my portion; the LOrd is mine inheritance.” He is “not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, and move and have our being-’ (Acts 17:27, 28). “He is NIGH unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth.” (Psa. 145:18). F ly ing Defenders of Fundam en ta lism D R W. B. RILEY, Pastor of the First »Baptist Church of •Minneapolis, Minn., and President of the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, is- launching a new movement in con nection with the fight that Associotion- has been putting up for the old faith. There has been; organized what is to be known as the Flying Defenders of Fundamentalism . This organization will be much like the Flying Squadron of the prohibition cause., Dr. Riley says that Gerald B. Winrod of Wichita, Kansas, editor of the magazine, “The Defender,” will head up this company and that among the speakers will be Dr. Arthur I. Brown, the famous Vancouver surgeon, who played so conspicuous a part in the Florida and Mississippi campaigns against Evolution; Harry Rimmer of Los Angeles, California, the President of the Science Research Bureau; Dr. Douthitt of Kansas City, the widely known evangelist, and Rev. W. E. Hawkins, Jr., of Fort Worth, Texas— a man whose fight for the faith in that State has given him a large reputation. Dr. Riley says that these are all young men— University graduates in every instance-, and men thoroughly cap able of holding their ground in any educational circle. The President of the World’s Christian Fundamentals Asso ciation also affirms that there will be presented during the year an anti-evolution bill in the State legislatures of Minnesota, Montana, Kansas, and Arkansas, and other states are under advisement. Dr. Riley affirms that fundamentalism has won its battle in Tennes- • see, Mississippi, Florida and Oklahoma, and will in all prob ability force the conflict in Kentucky again this Coming year. “I took a day to search for God, And found Him not. But as I trod By rocky ledge through Woods untamed, Just where one scarlet lily flamed I saw His footprints in the sod.”
The Defenders’ Column
Notes by
Managing Editor
“Above all, taking the shield o f faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts o f the wicked. And take the helmet o f sal vation, and the sword o f the Spirit, which is the word of God.“
P u ttin g God Further Off G AMALIEL BRADFORD recently undertook, in Harper’s Magazine, a discussion under the title, ‘‘Darwin, the Destroyer.” The headline was promising, and we felt gratified that Har per’s should give space to one who was awake to the disastrous results of Darwinism. It took but a moment, however, to discover that the writer conceived of Darwin as having undertaken a worthy piece of work in trying to blast what he designates as “religious concep tions- of the middle ages which still prevail among large por tions of the population.” Darwin is credited with having undermined the idea of a personal God who created a globe and peopled it with living beings, each of whom was an object of peculiar solicitude to his Creator. Darwin shattered human distinction .and superiority, and along with them the ancient ideas of Deity. The writer declares that the result is that “if God is left •in His universe at all, He is removed very, very far-away.” He recites a remark of Mrs. Darwin, who wrote to her daughter con cerning her husband’s book, “It will be very interesting, but I shall dislike it very much, as again putting God further off.” “For others besides Mrs. Darwin,” saj's the writer, “it has reduced Him quite to the vanishing point.” N ot S atisfied W ith R esults After having shown how completely the personal God, as distinct from creation, has been ushered out of His universe, Mr. Bradford does not seem to be altogether satisfied with the results. He concludes by confessing the utter sense of insig nificance which these conceptions have brought him, in the face •of the unapprehended processes of nature—the feeling of being aimlessly adrift in the vast universe, among an infinity of atoms, all struggling desperately to assert their own existence at the expense of all the others. Leopardi well expresses the logical conclusion of Darwinism: “Nature in all her workings has other things to think of than our good or ill.” . Brethren, there is no escaping the fact that the attempt to explain the universe by evolution puts God so' far away as to be of no practical benefit to His creatures. It is useless to seek for comfort in the fashionable talk about the “immanence of God,” by which it is meant that He is not distinct from the world, but is simply the force which has developed all things through natural processes of evolution. Be honest now! Of what possible religious value is this new conception? If this teaching gets the upper hand—if the minds of our
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